Organ donation, a key life-saving practice in modern medicine, faces profound ethical and cultural tensions in China. Traditional values—rooted in Confucian beliefs in bodily sanctity, filial piety emphasizing family continuity and integrity, and burial customs of "resting in the earth"—form strong cultural and psychological barriers to posthumous bodily integrity. This leads to low public donation willingness, a severe organ supply-demand gap, and preventable deaths among waiting patients, posing a critical public health challenge. 
This study identifies three core ethical tensions between traditional culture and organ donation: 
1. Conflict between individual bodily autonomy and family collective decision-making, as the body is traditionally seen as family property, with individual wishes often subordinated to family will. 
2. Contradiction between reverence for "bodily integrity" and medical "altruistic division," creating an unbridgeable gap between cultural adherence to intact remains and life-saving organ extraction. 
3. Disparity between traditional life-death views (judging death by cardiac arrest) and modern medical standards (brain death), hindering family acceptance of donation in critical moments. 

To address this dilemma, the study proposes a "cultural adaptive innovation" approach: 
1. Develop a family-empowered informed consent model. Respect pre-death donor wishes while strengthening family consultation. Professional coordinators guide ethical communication during grief, reframing donation as an act of filial piety, benevolence, and family honor—elevating life value rather than betraying tradition. 
2. Activate positive ethical resources in religious and folk cultures. Draw on Buddhism’s "bodily altruism," Taoism’s "life reverence," and folk beliefs in "accumulating virtue," with religious leaders framing donation as compassionate and virtuous to motivate believers. 
3. Advance institutional and cultural innovation. Establish transparent organ distribution supervision to rebuild public trust. In public education, honor donors as "life relays" and "benevolent heroes," integrating "body as gift" narratives into grief counseling to foster a culture merging traditional benevolence with modern life consciousness.